Frank Miller's had a hand in many comic-book movies, directly and indirectly.

The comic-book legend's Batman tales The Dark Knight Returns and "Batman: Year One" in Batman have been hugely influential on the superhero's films, from Tim Burton's 1989 Batman to Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy to Zack Snyder's upcoming Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. (Snyder, who also adapted Miller's 300 graphic novel, presented footage at Comic-Con Saturday with a Ben Affleck Batman in Bat-armor who looks he just rappeled off of a Dark Knight Returns page.)

Miller's also been a filmmaker himself, taking on Will Eisner's masked pulp character in The Spirit plus his own bruising guys and tough babes with co-director Robert Rodriguez in 2005's Sin City and its upcoming sequel Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (in theaters Aug. 22).

The likes of Marvel Studios projects such as The Avengers, X-Men movies and many more have almost created a whole genre out of comic-book movies, and there is a very good reason why that proliferation is happening now than when Miller was handling the adventures of Batman and Daredevil in the 1980s.

"It speaks to the marriage of two sister forms that didn't acknowledge each other for a long time," says Miller, 57. "Movies, because the money's so much bigger, always looked down on comics, and comics always looked down on themselves. Comics and games knew no self-respect with my generation."

Also, he adds, "I believe that the basic appeal of what's in comics is the appeal of myth. "It was a natural merging with Star Wars, where one became the other."

Miller visited Comic-Con with the Sin City cast, including Josh Brolin, Jessica Alba and Rosario Dawson, and he notes how the massive pop-culture event with 130,000 annual attendees has changed a lot since his heyday.

"It's a whole different thing," he says. "It used to be a little consortium of comic-book fans and professionals in a basement of a hotel. Now it's bigger than a Democratic National Convention."